


wonderful lies that wash away

by Legendaerie



Series: the proud remainders [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bedsharing, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, M/M, Sexual Content, Whump, slight Dimitri/Felix hints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 06:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21094586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: This is what scares him. Not death. Not treason. This.—-Three childhood friends desert their homeland in a war, and wonder what they left behind.





	wonderful lies that wash away

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the song “another place” by bastille and is an Overwhelming Mood
> 
> anyway I didn’t even know about Sylvix Week until we were already on Day 4: Rain which this WAS for but it took me so long I’m just flinging it into the void
> 
> I just wanna PARTICIPATE I’m SORRY I’ll go back to my other fics now that I’ve written one (1) sylvix and gotten myself good and sad about it

Five years is a long time; but Dimitri is gone within the space of weeks. At least, it feels that way to Sylvain, who wasn’t watching for the cracks in his sanity. One day, the Prince was fine, and the next Faergus had fallen and his childhood friend was a beast, blind in one eye and unable to see anything real anymore.

The shock hasn’t worn off as he rides through the thunderstorm, Ingrid behind him on her pegasus and forced to keep to the ground, but it’s worse for Felix. His friend has barely spoken since they left, the cold rain soaking into his clothes and leaving him pale as a corpse but he doesn’t seem to feel it. He just holds onto Sylvian’s hips and presses his forehead in the space between Sylvain’s shoulder pauldrons.

He doesn’t think anything of the silence at first; they’re practically deserters, abandoning their country for a promise Sylvain had nearly forgotten they made to their professor all those years ago. It makes sense for them to aim for stealth. And it had been Felix who had backed up Ingrid when she said they should leave, that their prince was a lost cause; Felix who had told them that they should leave immediately because the storm would make them harder to track; Felix who had wrapped his arms around Sylvain and whispered for him to ride like hell was chasing them. And it is Felix, now, who he worries for.

They’ve slowed to a walk now, his stallion weary from the rain and the mud weighing down his fetlocks. Sylvain lets go of the reins to lace his fingers with Felix’s, his gloved palms resting on the back of Felix’s cold hands.

“You okay?” he asks, twisting back in the saddle to look Felix in the eye.

When the swordsman raises his head, the rain plastering his dark hair to his face in sharp lines, he looks like a statue with cracks running through his marble complexion. Empty. Cold. Broken.

“What?” he asks, voice rough, and Sylvain realizes the worst is yet to come.

“I…” Swallowing, Sylvain hunts frantically for words: Felix is not okay and it’s written all over his face but Sylvain has never been good at comforting people. Comforting men, at least. “Just making sure you were still back there,” he manages, giving Felix’s hand a squeeze. “You’re so quiet, worried you had fallen off.”

In another time, Felix would have said something along the lines of it taking that long for Sylvain to check on him. That’s what they do. Sylvain says something stupid and Felix doubles down on it, calls him out on his nonsense and is consequently ignored or teased back.

“I’m here,” is what he says, and his eyes drop from Sylvain’s face.

He’s still holding Felix’s hand a minute later, and he’s afraid to let go just in case. He thinks his best friend might be lying, and that they left the real Felix behind with Dimitri, but he’s got his body and that’s something, right? The professor can fix the rest, right?

Sylvain ducks his head in the rain as a few large drops roll down his cheeks.

——-

They stop for the night in a village gutted by conflict a year prior. The rain has dropped to a drizzle blown about by the gusts of wind that moan like the dying through the alleys and shattered houses. A barn is amazingly intact, and even has a couple horse blankets not ruined by mice or mold. Sylvain takes off his upper armor and starts to rub their mounts dry as Ingrid sets up a bedroll in the hayloft. Felix keeps watch in the doorway, his silence unbroken.

“We’ll have to share,” Ingrid says. “I only grabbed one.”

“That’s more than I managed to bring,” Sylvain assures her, rubbing little circles in his horse’s coat to dry him off. If they don’t, their mounts could catch ill. “You’ve done an amazing job even finding this place for us.”

Ingrid’s pegasus, with his mud-freckled feathers, is considerably more waterproof thanks to an otter-like oiled coat. He’s already nosing the ground, looking for any traces of oats or sweet feed that might have lasted from months of neglect. “You could have, if you bothered to read maps.”

Their banter rings a little hollow in the abandoned barn; shallow and careful not to address what made them leave in the first place, incomplete without a third voice to join in. Sylvain finds himself staring at Felix’s back as he works down his horse, a lone figure barely visible in the crack of the large door. A shiver runs down that small frame, and something urgent and painful rises up in Sylvain’s chest.

He soothes his horse with mindless shushing, settling a blanket over his mostly-dry back, moves on to Ingrid’s pegasus who shies away from his initial touch. “Easy, easy, I won’t hurt you. Or sit on you with all this plate armor,” he jokes. The beast is unimpressed, but allows himself to be petted on the nose. “There we go.”

“Don’t take it personally, he doesn’t like men,” Ingrid says, climbing carefully down the ladder from the hayloft. She’s taken off her sodden cloak and dried her hair - it reminds Sylvain how damp he still is. Once she’s a little closer, she lowers her voice and disguises her words with horse-tone. “What’s wrong?”

“Beast sounds like his rider,” he says, his playful voice at odds with the ice in his stomach. Sylvain nods towards Felix with meaning. “Probably wanna take first watch so you don’t have to share a bed with me, right?”

Ingrid understands. Goddess bless her. “Can you blame me?” she plays along. “You have quite the reputation.”

There’s a beat, and they both look at Felix, waiting for him to join the conversation; chime in with a jab at Sylvain’s romantic infamy, a protest at having to sleep first, a sharp bark for them to keep their voices down because they’re on the wrong side of two armies now. 

Nothing but the rain fills the silence.

“Felix,” Sylvain says. A head turns a fraction his way, like the swivel of a cat’s ear. “C’mon. Time to rest.”

A mechanical, exhausted turn and Felix follows Sylvain to the ladder and goes up first, swaying backwards once or twice as if he’s going to fall. But they make it up to the loft as the rain starts up anew, loud on the metal plated roof.

Sylvain takes off his armor, leaving his boots on - he’s slept in them before, albeit unintentionally, too exhausted from battle to finish undressing - and helps Felix out of his coat. It’s heavy with rain, soaked through. Sylvain presses his hand to Felix’s neck and finds his skin icy.

“All right, c’mon,” he murmurs like he did with the horses, and coaxes another layer of clothes off. “You’re gonna get sick like that.” His own hands are trembling a little as he wrings water out of Felix’s coat, but he thinks it’s from fear. 

Some might consider Sylvain to be a selfish man, and in some ways he is. He cares about his own satisfaction, occasionally at the expense of the feelings of shallow women, but there are many people in his life he would do anything for. One of those people is below them, stationed at the crack in the door and watching for soldiers of either side. The other is a couple feet away, stripped to a shirt and smallclothes, and simultaneously miles out of Sylvain’s reach.

This is what scares him. Not death. Not treason. This.

The bedroll is large enough for two people, but only just. “It’s like when we were kids, Felix, remember?” he asks softly, afraid of the answer. 

None comes. Felix lowers himself onto the bedroll, his back to Sylvain. The paladin follows suit, too cold and weary to fight any further, and keeps close to his friend.

As his eyes adjust to the dark, he finds new scars on Felix’s pale back; ugly, rope-like ones he traces thoughtlessly with his fingers. Scars from magic, probably. Sylvain presses a little closer, careful to keep his armored shins away from Felix’s body, until they’re nearly touching.

“We left Dimitri,” Felix whispers. “We left our best friend to die.”

Sylvain smoothes his warm palms along Felix’s back in gentle strokes. “I know.”

“How could we—“ he chokes, a sound Sylvain hasn’t heard from that harsh mouth in years, “—betray him like that? He was— he was—“

“We couldn’t save him,” Sylvain says. “Not like that. Not when he didn’t want to be saved.” Up the spine, gentle circles with his heel at the tight muscles in the shoulders, down the ribs to the hips. He’s not thinking only of Dimitri any more, but of a beast with ginger hair and the ancient lance of a shared birthright. “Sometimes, we have to let go of the people we love before they drag us down with them.”

“We should have stayed.”

“And died for what? A sense of duty? Felix,” and he strokes his fingers through wet, dark hair, “our lives are worth more than that. _ Our people’s lives _are worth more than that.”

Felix rolls over so fast Sylvain’s hand is still hovering above them, their noses brushing.

“We have to stop the Empire,” he hisses.

“We will.”

“We must.” Another hitching, miserable noise and with a shock Sylvain realizes Felix is crying. “This— This has to be for something. Or I want you to kill me, because I— I— I can’t—“

He’s not thinking. Something else he’s often accused of; ignoring common sense to chase his feelings. Here, the feeling is a sorrow so deep it feels like it’s going to split him in two. He grabs the side of Felix’s face.

“We’ll win. We’ll survive. We’ll come back for everyone, and we’ll save them. I swear.” And he surges forward and kisses Felix.

He’s not thinking. So desperate to feel better, to make his best friend feel better, to patch up the wounds in their souls and try not to think about how impossible their promises to each other always are. It’s what he knows how to do, and by the time he realizes what he’s doing Felix is grabbing him with vicious, desperate hands and—

The rain picks up above them, a proper thunderstorm and deafening on the roof, but Sylvain hears Felix’s gasp when he rolls on top of him and sears it into his mind. The swordsman’s nails dig into his neck and back as they kiss, again and again and again, starving for and drowning in each other. Every smack of lips, every shaking caress with hands too young to be so calloused, drives the cold of the rain to a distant memory.

“Shh,” Sylvain warns, seconds before he ducks to Felix’s shoulder and bites down. Felix makes a low, breathless noise into Sylvain’s ear and his hips jerk up. “Shh, shh, shh,” and he winds himself around his best friend’s body, pulse pounding like the downpour on the roof, hands still shaking. “I’ve got you.”

Another wounded, desperate noise as Sylvain presses his body against Felix’s, pinning him to the bedroll. The feeling of Felix’s cock, hard against his own, makes him dizzy.

He’s not thinking. But neither is Felix.

“We can save them,” Sylvain rasps, keeping his voice as soft as possible. “We will do it. I know we will.”

“Please—“

“I know. I’ll take care of you this time, just let me—“ he slithers a hand between them to palm Felix’s cock, all the while kissing away the wet on his cheeks.

This, he knows how to do. So then why is he trembling so much when he takes Felix in hand under his smallclothes, feeling his cock twitch at the first touch of rough fingers on velvet skin? Why can’t he stop kissing his best friend on the neck, the lips, the forehead, every part of him he can reach? Why does he care more than he’s ever cared in his life about this tryst among so many others, and why does cut him all the way to the bone when Felix whispers “_ Dimitri _” instead of his name?

Felix bucks underneath him, so much sharper and stronger than any girl Sylvain has been with, and he knows he’ll have bruises from it in the morning. He just presses his face into Felix’s shoulder and keeps going, licking his palm once or twice to better slick Felix’s cock and tries so, so, so hard not to feel or think about anything at all.

It’s over both too fast and nowhere near fast enough. Felix seizes on the bedroll, a gasp frozen in his throat, and comes hot and wet all over Sylvain’s hand. Sylvain stays pressed against him, nose buried in the silky hair behind Felix’s ear, until he remembers how to breathe again.

“Sylvain,” he says, slowly, his voice rough and deliberate like a blade on a whetstone. The paladin braces himself for the worst.

“Don’t.”

Felix freezes, his lips brushing Sylvain’s jaw.

“Don’t mention it,” he manages, forcing his tone to be light. The way he nuzzles Felix as he withdraws is purely involuntary, and he keeps his eyes down as he wipes off his hand on the dusty floor of forgotten hay. It hurts like an arrow through his back but he’s felt it before. He knows how to be a replacement.

Silence, tense as a bowstring, stretches between them. Felix’s chest is heaving as he stares up at Sylvain, expression lost in the dark but his piercing scrunity impossible to miss. At least he isn’t cold anymore.

Sylvain lays down on his back beside Felix, heartbeat roaring in his ears. “Good night, Felix,” he says, their shoulders pressed close.

Out of the corner of his eye, Felix rolls away onto his side once more. “Good night.”

He lays there in silence, staring up at the roof, pulling himself back together. Sylvain cut his own brother down on the orders of a woman he never fully understood. He can bear the weight of one more impossible promise.

——

  


“Your turn for watch, Felix.”

Sylvain stirs as a body pulls away from his back, an arm retreating from his waist. The bed is too hard and too small; he’s already grabbed the hand on his hip before he remembers where he is and stops.

“Any signs?” a voice asks - the owner of the hand he’s clamped to his hip under the blankets. Sylvain keeps his eyes closed and slowly relaxes his grip.

“No.”

A pause. Felix sighs and eases away, something in the action breaking Sylvain’s heart all over again. “You better sleep. No one else can keep their balance on your pegasus if you have to rest while we ride.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Take my cloak, it’s drier than yours.”

Another body slides in behind Sylvain, a little more space between their bodies. He listens for the sound of Felix climbing down the ladder, then a little longer.

Peace. Safety. For the moment.

Sylvain falls back asleep and doesn’t wake until the morning.

  
  



End file.
